Does SCALE-UP Work?

Rigorous evaluations of learning have been conducted in parallel with the curriculum development and classroom design efforts. Besides hundreds of hours of classroom video and audio recordings, different schools have conducted numerous interviews and focus groups, conducted many conceptual learning assessments (using nationally-recognized instruments in a pretest/posttest protocol), and collected portfolios of student work. North Carolina State University has data comparing nearly 16,000 traditional and SCALE-UP students taking physics. Their findings can be summarized as follows:

students' ability to solve problems is improved

their conceptual understanding is increased

their attitudes are better

failure rates (especially for women and minorities) are drastically reduced

"at risk" students do better in later courses.

These results and the research behind them are described in many peer-reviewed articles. For more beyond those listed below, visit the SCALE-UP website .